monthly period

These days i need to write more. I have a procedure ahead, that i need to script my defence for. Ridiculous word, it's actually i am the damaged party. At it it is at a "police-judge" whatever that exactly would be, and my experience with the souple police 'techniques' of the past decades makes me expect a total and complete farce.

Such is a good reason to write a lot, because starting a piece against a nation abusing its laws to bring down individual citizens to despair, and living under subsistence level, is not exactly how i usually aproach matters.

I need practice. So like other bloggers around the world i decide to give you some general views from my life. I even consider skipping every political bit, where there is plenty of actuality with the turks making this newest statement over iraq souvereignity. (wich could be what is behind)

I have 2 kind of views in my life, real life ones and internet ones. These two are not very related, for example that i enjoyed a partner in crimes blog only more after she started a new one: http://uncensoredarabwomanblues.blogspot.com/

You will find the links for her other blogs there. On one we are even allowed to comment.. some day in the future i will sway to her system. Have a blog were i speak my ideological truths, and noone can comment, wonderfull, if ever anything happens that would make my blog more relevant then the most, i will be spared the professional propagandists that clutter the comments sections of so many iraqi blogs.

For now i have only this active blog really. So the comments section will stay open,
i will just delete comments that call for pitty for neo liberal, neo con, perhaps not fascist straightout, ppl as van gogh was one. (comment deleted now, le. i see you find need to misrepresent his case internationally now, and i think that suffices.:)

That said lely is a very nice person. With just some general misconceptions and more good then bad ideas. She has a blog: http://lelly-mondobongo.blogspot.com/,
wich is nice to read, and not that bad for anglosaxon standards.

Uncensoredblues is as typical a sunni-arab as she is an anglosaxon, people are like that. For most comprehensive blog on iraki matters i still enjoy abbas haniya 'kid'
,who changed his name. The iraki blogosphere turned into tabloid like scenes these days, rather predictably a shift is apreciable, where expatriat iraki's slowly loose some of their credibility. I think it is late at it, i have been waiting for all this as long as i watched iraki blogs. Unfortunately my favourit blog in irak.. (i prefer to call kid's although he doesn't like it, for reason of ease of use) http://ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com/, isn't any more in irak. Kid/abbas is somewhat outspoken at times, i couldn't advise it for being the most objective, although i personally get most of my impressions through it, it is also the most original one.

And now he's considering switching to arab. I really hope he won't. Although i understand his reasoning.(Other arabs at least have a clue what they went through).

I tried to blog pakistan in a way that resembles how i used iraki blogs to stay informed. It's been a shocking experience. Pakistan being relatively far from the wars that raged in the ME for the most part, has been stereotyping the problems in a not very alien way. The whole pakistani culture is on a level of discussion that for most westerners is kind of inedible. Having a rather deep, and especially historical dislike for zionism is one thing, treating it all out with so harsh voices and only a few trying to smooth the polemics. confuses. One thing is for sure, before the pakistani nation as a whole emancipates from several prejudices is way to go.
On the other end apparently the pakistani archetypical evolved mulsim view has not become very informed inside pakistan itself.

Perhaps i should say something more about irak(blogs). It is not only that people face difficulty in having a clean conversation but, like abbas points out today, Iraqis are generally depressed over the situation. They don't so much regard it in doomsday terms as i do, with my dislike for all armed forces, factions and militia, in the end all militia, representing one or another power base.
More like: this didn't help, that didn't help, what next will not help us.

Personally i am still thinking that removing foreign troops is the best. The violence inside irak could not get worse, and the first incentive, the foreign presence being gone, perhaps the peace will return sooner then we expect.

However thats just as unrealistcally as anything, i can see it that way. But try to convince the presidents (of the oilcompanys) and they will spawn many 100s of pages of reports to deny the option. Good reason for me to keep writing, see you soon.

more blogosphere, some media

Using the next blog button.

The past 3 days i have been trying out the blog world behind the next button.
Not much good eh?

Basicly i decided that blogspot and authoritys could not allow to much porn to keep popping up, and that the resource for political propaganda (and often insult to some extend) would be more limited then the nr. of real personal blogs.

Mechanism of mere distraction, (femalised blogs, blogs with the happy baby, religious
load, IT advertisement, get-rich-scheme based rubbish, and a huge generally commercial trend) are not hard to aprehend.

Its tough going though. I think the pool is very censored. That is not in the least proven by the regular occuring hate-islam very "actuality" based blog, u see passing by.

However , there is a limit to the nr of blogs censors can create while still censoring the ones others make, and therefore now and then you find a really (probably) personal blog. Ofcourse! there must be millions.

I have some general observations on all of these beautifull, relaxing, funny, openminded, hopefull blogs.

1> To many have to much lay-out to stay attractive. every element of layout distracts the attention of the fact something might be said on the blog.

example of that are eg. filmclip links. (although they can be weird, nice or funny)
A few (one or two), is actually okay. That makes the attention go towards the item.
and if its rewarding, my impression of the blog only rises.

So every thing has its exception and these are general remarks.

I dislike text that is not black on white, or something clear on white, light yellow, whatever , very light. All the blogs that feature dark backgrounds for text are unreadable. I hardly ever immediatly catch a subtitle for something on such a blog.
As i am blogging to read, or otherways collect, information and perhaps impressions
i definetly want! to get a quick impression and understanding of a blog and its themes, so that it does not work well with text on black is empiric.
Hardrock blogs also suffer from this effect badly.(rather a waste of art that:()

A pure picturesque or photographical blog is somewhat of an exception , but it is a bit out of the focus of my current research on content.

Standard headers that pretend "creativity".
The most boring thing you can have. Really decent scientific blogs can get utterly ravaged by a standard blog layout.
Advise: keep it simple, or make something up yourself and keep that small!
introduce people to your art and creativity widely only later .

Art oriented blogs do, like most art, benefit when they achieve a thematic impression. similarly book reviews etc., are only appaling when they come in long lists.

Banners and adds. Almost each of these suffices to destroy your blog.
An exception are strongly organised thematical blogs. Usually political and actuality related. Such blogs tend to be archives of their own and some related banners and links don't need to misfit in the lay out of the page.

For the rest banners may be used like photos or filmlets, only a few , here and there in the blog in a thematical context is quitte workable, although it will not perform much advertising. In general i think people should limit banners to a very few. If the first page of a blog is full of adds, chances are i dont look on.

The first page effect.
Blogs are finely tuned to actuality in many ways.
The first page, the first few articles, define if the interesse will and can be caught. The unworkable thing would be to always have an excellent article on top.

Strong archival type blogs sometimes manage to maintain such strong standards,
An easier aproach is when a blog links to blogs and articles mostly. As a function.
Such is hardly work for an individual, as the relevance of such blogs is related to actuality.

The above is not even about the content of the blog, it is only about its accesibility. After one has made an accessible blog one can start adding content with some hopes of catching the attention.

For that i think i have a few tips to.
Don't get carried away.(I bet i am to blame badly myself but anyhow).
Some things can be exciting for other people because they are yours, and some can't.
Things that easily enchant your public tend to be things they understand intuitively,
things they recognise, you can only enchant another person with an idea by respecting that.

It means you have to aproach a subject sometimes, or remain consistent in aspects.
You cannot easily enchant people with an idea by merely stressing the point.
Either we understand, and then you are overdoing, or we don't , and then you should try to explain it in another way.

Literally in a populist construct (provided positive intends) , the transplant of the new idea, the enlightening of your world, stemms only from a bases were the values are defaulted. When there is the need to weigh old values, the idea doesn't anymore proof.

It is not only when you want to implement a new phylosophical concept or political idea. When you just want to tell other people how you think or what you feel,
it still helps a lot to also radiate some neutrality, show that you are aware at least that also your position has limitations.

Not take all of yourself for granted.

It depends what and who you are writing for, but my premise is we all are writing for all of us for all history.


All of the above are individual assumptions on possible improvements of blogs.
On with general improvements of the blogosphere.

I want a categoristaion fo blogs, not a pretentious feed listing, but an objective,
i'd even prefer to be outrightly discriminated for my themes then to accord or conform to any pretention of a feed, or any other exclusive mechanism.

So neutral and objective classification of blogs.
It should be kept simple.
For example 5 main categorys.
It should also be effective.

Listing and unlisting of one of the 5 categorys should both exclude what the user wants excluded and include anything the user might forget to include.
A real random browse function would be very usefull.
A better statistical tool then real random personal impressions hardly exists, but the tool need to be near perfect to correlate to function.

I think there could be a separate categorisation possible, based on voting systems.
The problem with that is people tend to stick names on things, places and people.

A sheer content based categorisation would prevent that. I would also apreciate a system in wich a few symbols would be added to every blog.
I cannot exactly see a right shape for it, perhaps a votometric construct, but something taht would tell you in a glimpse wether something is controversial,
commercial, policied, etc. I suppose that is somewhat utopic, but also i think it is a somewhat usefull item in pressfreedom and freedom of expression.

One problem for such a system would be the huge international biases, since we will partly be dependend of technique not evrywhere available in working at these issues.

Another problem is the individual may not want to be identified in symbols.
This however is psychologically aprehendable and with research involving all partys
acceptable status may be achieved.

The symbols or labels should themselves be a link of neutral character.
It should not be made that every idea gets bombarded with anti-propaganda, but yet that it gets revealed in it's contexts, pro, contra and as actuality and assemblance of facts).


General media.

To a certain extend above also is very utopic, especially the assesment of facts does already suffer from degenerate resources.
For reason that certain facts have to high alarm value on populaces. In an objective assesment and focussing on problem solving, public opinion will function most actively in an abundance of information, on the longer term we may cause great damage and harm by not living with the facts now.

in practice you can only remove the causes for violence by acknowledging them.
often in shame.

Strangely the islam is quite right in saying media can put people on the wrong way.
Since commerce uses your vulnerabilitys the focus is soon shifted towards contrast.
More often then not it is your limit or norm that gets trashed.
So it is very hard to show respect , for media in a commercial situation.
The net effect untill now is of highly doubtfull quality.
Not strange, the general trashing of one limit (heh, an artistic one in my perception) invites the stampede of yet another while people still long for the entertainment.

Only a radically different aproach of these media-matters would facilitate positive changes in the lives of very many people. Plainly make them more happy in fact.

browsing some blogs:) next hint: don't use meaningless lables.
oh well , again one of these that makes you close all tabs...
sigh, you get punished for freedom of expression, didn't i tell you?

blogosphere (iraks distracts)

I have discovered a new feature on the internet : the blogosphere.

Blogs used to be for me what my blog is, lowtech(hardly use html), (semi-)personal, basically directed at information.

As such i have had great advantage of blogs in my "researches".
A vivid and representative political blog is very easily identified.

How to find out remote peoples opinions through blogs:

There are about 3 factors, (my blog is neither vivid nor representative, since it is mostly a radical personal outlet, and not something collective.)
that identifie an "important" or "significant" blog, for a political situation.

1st. the topic should be diverse.. generally when the genre of the posting is the old cow type, (10 years ago so and so blew up X, for the communist Y, when in fact not much is clear about that, such blogs are prejudiced.

They can be relevant as a ending point in researching one specific idea, or party, but they are not much use for informing on the actual situation.


2nd. Commenting should be unmoderated. Blogs (not commercial newsoutlets etc.) that moderate every comment can be ok, but they will mostly represent a party.
On such blogs you usually find a somewhat limited nr of opinions, of slightly more then rewarded animosity. Typically against the same targets, and when the blog is chiefly directed at westerners not necessarily the same targets over time.

3rd. The blogger must provide some handheld or debatable input of their own.
Without that there is not an actualist and evolving discussion often.

Ofcourse blogs that forfill these 3 prerequisites tend to get into the eye, firstly of the blogosphere perhaps, but not uncommonly only from the infosphere.
The general linkage through inet.

As a result of that blogs have an uncommon element of censoring and influentiation of their own. Superficially it shapes into 2 forms.
Selfcensoring: where the maker of the blog censors certain opinions or aproaches things onesidedly (as long as the comments are not masked it does not matter, it is only a statistical negative implication for its relevance. It will seem to represent an opinion that is in fact less general then it looks on the blog.

Contributional censoring. Certain contributors will be strongly in denial,
usually decibelling loudly over obstrusive subjects of spelling and "official" reports. They tend to hold untenable opinions over the local situation and they end up chatting among another.

Certain nations (US, Israel) have a great number of people using this aproach,
a good third??? not easy. Hongkong or so? Probably a european country, at least on the national fora this trend is available in the netherlands. It is not as common or pronounced.
Such people may or may not pose as other people. Lebanese blogs eg. are a bit dilluted by this phenomenon. They may for example pose as radical elements of something. Or as plain dumb stubborn supporters of the other cause.
They may also pretend to be a neutral third party, or just a random element of the (western) public. Sometimes such people say they have lost familymembers in wtc, afghan and whereever else pitty might silence us. That is more chattish then bloggish, however it is in the taste.(perhaps it is the same as the Shoa collective 'fears'.)

My favourite example for this development is "healing Irak"
an integer (albeit rather conformative) blog. One where 1? time i got censored.
Still i don't think it was that smart, but at least i was convinced the blog, may have thought my post was to "hot", i think it was not, wich then proved the next day, but it does not matter that much. Only i post not there anymore when it is important.

In the healing irak blog, the very direct emphasis of the writer on the iraki and baghdad situation helps the public to stay awake. To realise what untenable situation irak is in. In terms of blogs irak is the one most organised example i know. It plays a role that the situation rewards study perhaps, still iraki slogger is also an unequalled source.

However some years ago the iraki blogosphere got under the attention of the Usian and to a lesser extend GB-european scrutiny. Several bloggers skyrocketed into fame,
and several blogs got checked with surprising regularity by surprising numbers.
It must have changed everything, when i entered the iraki blogosphere 2 years ago,
the atmosphere was scary. Several bloggers where disappearing, had disappeared, or otherways gave up hope? anyway a lot of bad news there, all major blogs had their
wurms and moles, blogs get spamned by endless contributions of us housewives with fort Hope opinions. etc. etc.

All the major blogs had been usurped by the secret services. They preserved only a dormant neutrality. It could be dangerous for others to post, and I was not sure about wich party would actually react more violently in most any case.
(i'm rarely very into cases when i reply for that reason, it gets rather hard to say everyone is okay and you ahouldn't blame the antagonists, when you have to be precise over a certain bloodbath eg.)

So i found 'healing irak's precautions superfluous, as i was already very cautious.
Anyhow. I don't blame him, it was obviously a point of discussion and i do trust the person of healing irak to have a decent sense of "irakiness".
That besides he is hardly pretending to be impartial. He is obviously on the hand of security and against militia in any shape, but it doesnt much help him to define his position i think. He tends to be against sadr's movement a little on the propagandistic side though. That is btw. a rather common emotion in irak. Real neutral opinions are hard to find.

People in irak are forced into having an opinion, also on something that would otherways be marginal or even merely institutional like a mahdist movement. That exagerated through the Usian stress on diversity of the shia south,(for probably mostly militairy reasons for starters) turned into a huge factor.(GB did her thing but only in the big scheme).

Sadr has not been playing the game badly. He has not been a major factor of escalation(afaik), Except the apparent availability of his troops. He stuck to the social aspect of his movement, and he has been voicing a few usefull opinions.
Not in the least pointing out that a mahdist movement has the greater interest in getting foreigners out.
Overall i think he has tried to treat the situation fairly under a rather great bias.

(not that he would admit the exact content of his foreign relations if any)
Nevertheless he scares us to death.

The nature of the situation , with every piece of baghdad divided into bits, shortages, ethnically based outrage, mediocre contact, and administration as a result.Seperative feelings of every involved group, and the idea to be thrown in the arena of the world powers, before the lions. That is an idea that is close to the exact definition of mahdism. For someone just sympathising with sadr indeed their own militia are selfdefence.

I cannot judge the exact proportions of violence, do the sadr more damage then the regular shia? It didn't start like that what i know. Personally my guess is the tables are not weighing heavy on sadr. He has been showing some constraint, and such an attitude is not always fake.

Also the non militia mahdist are the really dangerous one. They have the prototype for suicide attack, since they are motivated through 'injustice out of control',
the struggle of an individual against a repressive context, through years, severe circumstances and also generations, typically. A mahdist does not expect to live through the fight because they well know all the firepower is on the other side.
It's only : do something and die, instead of , just die.

No wonder we are scared to death. And they have death squads of their own, though honestly i think the coalition forces routed out the worst ones by now.

Irakis are really scared for sadr now... he has got everything the other politicians have not. Anyhow one good thing is there is a consensus that Sadr can't be president..

i'm wondering why exactly exactly, for 2 days now, and i have some thoughts
Thirstly the concept of secularism is known in irak, but it is not really the point.
Many religious types may have been in politics in irak, and many partys have a religious base.

The point is exactly also why iran cannot come to an arrangement with him, although the perspective , be it anarchist or iraki, is completely different.

Sadr might play a role in iraki politics when the situation gets stabilised. Only...
How should that situation look for Sadr to play the right role, noone knows.
Not even Sadr.

Saddams last words were, don't take sadr..
Maybe even himself he doesn't want to be president.

Sadr is the kind of person with the kind of movement that at the right moment should say... No we represent the people, this natures reserve must stay!

He doesn't need to be a president to manage most affairs where his influence is usefull. Sadr is slightly less dangerous then politics, and we 'd like to keep it that way.

Ofcourse in certain areas (the nature reserve eg.) these arguments hardly count,
however that is the discussion about splitting up irak.

How do i think of splitting up irak?
Actually i think it would not hurt, it was never needed, but now it is made to be that way, it won't hurt. It would be nice when the sunni have quiet in middle irak,
the shia in the south and the israelis in jerusalem (since what will they do about baghdad then). The precedent of sharing remaining oil wealth, or preferably that of regaining control of the resources, can be as unifying for this world as anything.

The only problem i have with it is the confirming of the prejudice, that a united irak would not be possible because of "muslim barbarism".

Me nor Sadr perceives recent iraki times that way, wich is why Sadr is so heavily under fire from the western media. That he is also under fire of the more moderate forces in the chorus is because of the fear.

We fear the moment he gets the idea to indeed seperate, to start fighting the government before the occupation in revenge of attacks and deaths.
When the mahdi army as a whole would start behaving as the regular deathsquads in irak do, all hell would break loose. Sadr would never accept that though.
I ( an anarchist) oppose that to, social chaos and anarchy are completely different things.

Not surprisingly this translates into a defensive strategical option. Sadr's interests are basicly Iraki, so he needs to clear some ground to hide.
Still it actually happens naturally as a result of people securing their own safety.

I mentioned before, i think i am in no position to have an overview of proportions, although i think i might do ok at scales.

I can not judge wether the US army, the US allied Irak army, The us allied Irak police, The irak police, The government militias, The non us allied irak army, the non us allied irak police, what that matter even the kurdish security corps, or any other security corps preventing loss of job, any splinter or opponent of the aforementioned, eg. The government allied shia police pro-militia deathsquads mahdi engagement group with the peshmerga link , or perhaps the nongovernment allied army anti police pro-militia and mahdi engagement anticoalition group with a direct mossad contact, is responsible for the most violence(neither of the 2 last i thought). In short.....

who did it?

A picture like this makes you wonder if anyone is really in a position to care.